Weary
by BrokenKestral
Summary: The world seems grey when Susan's tired. And grieving. There's times when she has to learn to take Aslan's presence on faith.


A/N: a couple of the things I've written recently have mentioned me being sick, and a couple wonderful people have asked how I've been. I am ok; I'm not sick enough for me to stay home from work, but it's been hanging on for over a week, and between three consecutive weekend trips (the last starting today), work, and other events, I'm really, really tired. I tried working on "A Turtle's Tale," I really did, but I'm tired and the world is grey, and I gave up and went and played Freecell instead. But I had words that wouldn't leave my head, and I went to write them down, and got this. It was born out of my lunch break, when I sat and wasn't sure I could get up again; the poem was from a couple months earlier. It's bleaker and less hopeful than most of what I've written, but there might be a few people who are this tired as well, and sometimes it's good to hear someone else put it into words.

We're told "don't give up / keep that hope alive"*  
What happens to those words, if my hope already died?  
If nothing's left inside this picture of tomorrow  
But hard things to do, and bleak unlifted sorrow?  
And hope is like a promise that never will come true;  
It's a sword to heart that threatens what little's left of you.  
I've heard of resurrection, the hope of man alive,  
The dead are made to live, no, more than that, to thrive;  
I've heard tomorrow's city glistens with sheer gold  
And there's a river flowing—with life, or so we're told.  
Today is grey, tomorrow – it all seems much the same  
Because I know what's broken – it's me, my heart, my pain.  
And I don't see how walking on those life-giving streets  
Will give hope a home here in what's broken, the soul inside of me.

OOOOO

The weariness waits.

Waits, for anytime she's not moving.  
Waits, with a list from the past of everything recent that's gone wrong.  
Waits, and when she's not moving, makes her ears long to be deaf to all that's still to be done.

Moving makes it matter less; a background problem, unnoticeable. Almost irrelevant. It's not. There's consequences for ignoring it. But wishful thinking sets it out of mind when she moves.

But when she sits, the bones in her arms are weary. They lay limp on the small square table in front of her. She is not sure she can stand again. Only there is still much to do and she must. The clock ticking time till she must move again is a wearying and cutting sound. If sounds could cut. If the ticks cut, her fingers would ache with the small cuts that never quite break all the layers of skin. Leaving her just enough left to still work with her cut hands. Each tick and tock.

But this isn't right, she knows. She knows she's Aslan's appointed. She knows this is made to be beautiful. She wonders why it tastes like bitter medicine, and how she's supposed to call it a feast.

"Go to bed, Su." Her brother is looking at her from the doorway. She wonders how much he sees, if he knows of the list of past things crippling her soul and the list of future things weighing her arms. There is no time for bed.

But her brother lays a gentle hand on her forehead, and it's a moment of coolness. "You're sick," he frowns. "Go to bed. Whatever's etched on your brow, it'll wait."

Most nights, that's how it went. And she'd wake up, either the next day or perhaps even three, and it would be better.

But then there was an accident. And after that, that one day that divided the rest of her life into _before_ and _after_, there was no one to tell her the things to do, they would wait. And she grew wearier and greyer.

Even through a discovery, a reunion, a reborn faith inside a church while a priest weeps with her, the weariness remained. Lessened, when she went to church, when she read the things He'd said in this world, and sometimes when she sang, but grief didn't quite leave, and the weakness of a weary spirit is woven by grief. It starts at the edges, but creeps, blanketing everything and taking away joy. And she read in this world that His joy is strength, and she found that she had none of either.

Get up. Do the dishes, the garden, the calls, the people, the listening, the speaking, and through it all, try to stay business enough to forget how hard it all is. Move, so the weariness is pushed aside.

And pray someone is there to catch you, when you move too much and you inevitably, eventually, fall and cannot move.  
But there was no one left to catch her.  
And one day she did fall; she sank to the floor, back against a cabinet, and sat, with nothing left to make her move.

In her weariness she missed the Presence sitting with her, but He sat with her regardless, and when she finally sank into sleep, He watched over her. All through her long night, into the day that she only saw as bleak, He watched. And spoke. And taught her to hear, and in the hearing was the beginning of joy. She heard just enough to be strong enough to wait for the rest. For the day she'd hear Him clearly. For the day she'd see Him. For the day she'd feel Him catch her when she fell, when the faith she had in Him doing so finally became sight.

OOOOO

For those still stuck in the waiting and the weariness, may you know that God is with you.

*Lyrics from Zachary Freedom, from a song in a concert I missed the name of and cannot find online; I just wrote down "Keep your hope alive [...] and live / like you're not afraid to die."


End file.
